A Very Satisfying Accomplishment, Time Now to Enjoy

Today I finished planting the 2025 harvested daylily seeds. It was so incredibly satisfying to refresh my pivot table after entering today’s accomplishments and see … no lines left. Hooray!!! It was an experience. A shall not be repeated experience. Way, way, way too much “fun”. But everything is accounted for and reconciled. Now we wait to see what nature does.

First fun story – After planting all the daylily seeds, I realized I have four labels/tags left. They were from a very welcome discovery today. I thought I was out of labels. And I was not going to buy anything more for the 2025 harvested seeds. I was cutting up the flat side of the plastic trays from the 4 pks of cream cheese danish, cutting strips, and using that for labels! So today, after finding the forgotten stack of labels, and using them, there were four left. A confirmation to stick with the “only four” crosses I have planned this year? I think so 😉

Second fun story – About 1/2 hour after I finished planting the rest of the daylily seeds and had put away all the supplies, we were sitting outside relaxing. In hummed … the first hummingbird to visit this year! It looked big and healthy. It hummed in, looked around, and hummed back out. It is May! The hummingbirds are back! You can bet the first of the feeders has food cooling down right now and will go out shortly.

And for beauty – The gardens look awesome. They are filling out so nicely. It should be a few more weeks and the Asian lilies will start to bud out. And the clematis out back are starting to vine so they should have blooms to share in a few weeks.

Time now for patio time – for long morning coffees, or a beverage of choice in the afternoon. Just sitting, chatting with neighbors, and relaxing as much as a gardener can. We can. With some occasional “let me check one thing” moments 😉

I leave you with another picture of one of the white squirrels, from this morning.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

What a difference a week makes!

We are at the end of April now, and what a difference the last week has made!

Sandy’s Corner is really filling out.

The daylilies look great.
Last year’s seedlings are much farther along than in previous years when I was still working at finding out what they liked best.
The hostas are even looking much fuller this year.
And our volunteer shrub does indeed look like a currant. It can stay, at least for now. The birds will probably love it.

On the flip side, I could kick myself for buying those tiny little 6 cell seed planting setups. They definitely fit perfectly into the grey seedling boxes, but the seeds are not germinating like they do when I plant medium pots of up to 20 “same” seeds together. I think I know someone who might appreciate them for starting veggie seeds next year 😉

Overall, I am finding that I really like what I have going on in the townhome gardens this year. It has been fun to see the new look and focus come up, and I am more convinced than ever that scaling way back on the crosses this year is the right plan. I can always scope up if I want to, but I am definitely not enjoying that I have so much work yet to go on getting last year’s seeds going. A lighter scope next year continues to sound fabulous.

The historic cemetery gardens are really filling out as well.

This past weekend my husband and I went over and did some spring cleanup at the historic cemetery gardens. They are really looking good! I do suspect our phantom weeders have been helping as well, because I kind of remember it being a little messier a week or so ago. So, thanks to them!

There is one sad thing. Over the past couple years, I have added purchased bare root daylilies to the historic cemetery gardens, as well as added seedlings from crosses I did at the townhome gardens. When I walked though a week or so ago, it looked like they were not there. This past weekend that was confirmed. There are moles or gophers over there, but the markers are almost all missing too, so that is odd. At any rate, I do have the seeds I harvested from there last fall, and I will direct sow those to do one final try with seeds and seedlings, but I think I have my answer. Bare root planting is a no go there. And probably seed and seedling planting as well.

On the upside, the daylily from South Seas self-seed that I planted at the historic cemetery last fall is thriving, so additions like that may be an option, go forward.

That’s the gardens updates for the week.

I hope you have a great week ahead!

White Squirrel – and we still need protection for the seedlings

Oh yes, the white squirrels are super fun. And they, like their grey buddies, would love to dig in whatever it is that I have in the seedling boxes.

And we have our first Autumn Red cross seedling up. And screen will be going on the seedling box shortly 🙂

I hope you have a wonderful day!

Be Blessed!

White squirrel chasing grey squirrel

Our June in January picture today was taken June 12,2025 – one of the local white squirrels chasing a grey squirrel.

A White Squirrel, Our Dog Having Fun, Very Full Hosta Garden, and Asian Lillies in Bud

For many years we have had white squirrels in our neighborhood. True albino. We even took pics in the beginning and sent them in to some sort of tracking site.

This pic dates back to Jan 9, 2019

And for our June in January pics today I have a few. The first is our dog mid-stride, front paw tucked, up north last June 9. WAY in the back is the outhouse. The lanterns mark the way at night 😉

This next pic will not be a view we see again. It was the very full hosta garden under the linden on June 9, 2024. Mysteriously we lost 18 hostas between fall of 2024 and spring of 2025. We shall not focus on theories, but rather, enjoy the picture, and know that the empty spaces, where the hostas were, found new occupants in 2025.

And this pic is quintessential early June (June 9, 2024) in our back townhome garden – the peach Asian lilies still in bud, a set of tulip leaves fading (one looks like it may have provided a bunny meal at one point – nothing left where the tulip bloom was), and I also remember that hosta, where a leaf looks a bit eaten, was actually from being stepped on and crushed. Stuff happens.